The End of Eve - Paperback

An honest and "darkly humorous mother-daughter memoir" (San Francisco Chronicle) about the author's experience as the reluctant caregiver for her volatile, terminally ill mother, Eve

At age 39, Ariel Gore has everything she's always wanted: a successful writing career, a long-term partnership, a beautiful if tiny home, a daughter in college and a son in preschool. But life's happy endings don't always last. If it's not one thing, after all, it's your mother.

Knock knock.

Her name is Eve. Her epic temper tantrums have already gotten her banned from three cab companies in Portland. And she's here to announce that she's dying. "Pitifully, Ariel," she sighs, "you're all I have." Ariel doesn't want to take care of her crazy dying mother, but she knows she will.

It's the right thing to do, isn't it?

And, anyway, How long could it go on?

"Don't worry," Eve says. "If I'm ever a burden, I'll just blow my brains out."

Ariel's partner, Sol, agrees to come along, too, but on the condition that they all move into a bigger house . . . in New Mexico. So Ariel packs up her home and family and moves more than a thousand miles away from their work and community to become her mother's reluctant caregiver.

Darkly humorous and intimately human, The End of Eve reads like Terms of Endearment meets Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? Amidst the chaos of clowns and hospice workers, pie and too much whiskey, Ariel's own ten-year relationship begins to unravel, forcing her to reconsider the meaning of family and everything she's ever been taught to call "love."